Skull Session: Ohio State's Short Layoff, Maurice Clarett's Thoughts on J.K. Dobbins, and Justin Fields' Heisman Odds

By Kevin Harrish on December 16, 2019 at 4:59 am
We've got a helmet stripe in today's Skull Session.
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We're heading into day two following Joe Burrow's Heisman speech and it's still a little misty in here.

Word of the Day: Genial.

 NO WAITING AROUND. With the number of players up for national awards this year, I know some of y'all are still vocally rattled by the awards circuit and 51-day layoff ahead of Ohio State's 41-14 defenestration at the hands of Florida following the 2006 season.

But that ain't happening this year. Instead of over seven weeks in 2006, we've got just three weeks this year. So this time, it's much less of a lengthy layoff and much more like a bonus bye week.

A quirk of the calendar and a shift of the calendar conspired to make this time off as short as it can be for any team making the College Football Playoff semifinal.

• First, conference championship weekend was on Dec. 7, the latest date possible. The league title games are held on the first Saturday in December, and this year that was the seventh day of the month. This was just the second time in the nine years of the Big Ten Championship that it was held Dec. 7. Last year it was Dec. 1.

• Second, the playoff semifinals were moved up from when they were originally scheduled. The games are on Dec. 28, when they were first planned for Dec. 31. In 2015, the second season of the playoff, the games were held on Thursday, Dec. 31, which resulted in lower TV ratings as fans complained about weekday New Year’s Eve broadcasts. The next summer, the playoff announced that the semifinals would be played on Saturdays or holidays. That moved the games this season from Tuesday, Dec. 31, to Saturday, Dec. 28.

The only other time Ohio State had less than 30 days before a modern championship run, the Buckeyes dumped Bama in the Sugar Bowl after a 26-day layoff. The other three times, Ohio State had more than 30 days between games and lost by an average score of 37-12.

Needless to say, I'm extremely down with the way this schedule shakes out.

 GOAT ON GOAT. J.K. Dobbins has been compared to Maurice Clarett since the very first day he stepped on the football field in a Buckeye uniform (and promptly gutted Indiana and broke Clarett's debut rushing record). 

Clarett obviously never finished his Buckeye career, but with Dobbins at the end of his Ohio State career (folks, he's gone) as one of the best Buckeye backs to ever do it, Clarett has some thoughts on what he's seen from him the past three seasons.

“His success is not surprising to me. After learning about his upbringing, coming from a military household, his mannerisms and his style of running isn’t surprising to me at all. You can see why he has the stats that he has and you can see why he’s had the tremendous career that he’s had at Ohio State. He is a young and hungry player who runs really hard. Very fast. He’s very elusive in open space. He’s not only a great running back but he has the characteristics of being a great teammate and he’s an even better person off the field. I just spoke to him the other day and I just congratulated him on the season he’s having and I wished him best of luck the rest of the season. It has been very cool to watch his growth and development not only this season but over the course of his career.”

Regardless of what happens this season, Dobbins is going to go down as one of the most hilariously underappreciated players in Ohio State history. He's on pace to have more rushing yards than Ezekiel Elliott did his final season and he put the team on his damn back the past three games against top-15 teams.

And yet, he's overshadowed by Jonathan Taylor (who I'm not going to slander in here – he's a damn good back as well and put up comparable numbers) and by two dudes on his own team.

But it's cool. Everyone else can take the individual awards. He'll just go out carrying the Buckeyes to a national championship.

 THERE'S ALWAYS NEXT YEAR! Justin Fields didn't win the Heisman Trophy – it went to the Ohio State graduate at the ceremony, instead – but he's already the favorite to claim next year's prize, if you're into betting on events that won't pay out for a year.

And if you're looking for some gambling advice...

Also, third-place should just be Oklahoma Quarterback To Be Named Later +450. I'd sooner bet on that than... over half this list.

I mean, if you'd really like to wager on Mac Jones, you just go ahead and hand me that money instead of lighting it on fire. It's probably the same folks who wagered actual money on Jake Fromm winning the Heisman this season.

And I'm absolutely appalled at the downright disrespect these oddsmakers are showing Chase Young and J.K. Dobbins. They both finish in the top-five this year and they don't even have them on the board before next year – their senior seasons?

 LIFE-CHANGING MOVE. I thought Matthew Burrell was going to be the next great Ohio State offensive lineman. Shit, Matthew Burrell thought that Matthew Burrell was going to be the next great Ohio State offensive lineman.

It obviously didn't shake out that way, but the way things went instead might have saved his life.

Extreme props to Burrell for being so open and candid about all this because there's absolutely no chance he's alone in these struggles. His struggles aren't wasted, because his story is surely going to help someone else down the line.

 FALSE ALARM. Urban Meyer was watching Sunday's Redskins vs. Eagles game from the owner's box of FedEx Field, causing quite a stir among media folks. But it turns out, he was just watching his former players play – because retired coaches do that when they're in town.

Reporters waited out Meyer long after the game ended, but couldn’t reach him for comment. But one of his former college players, Washington’s Terry McLaurin, said after the Eagles’ come-from-behind 37-27 win that Meyer’s presence had nothing to do with Washington’s head coaching search. Meyer, who stepped down from Ohio State’s job because of health concerns after last season, attended Saturday’s Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. He called McLaurin Saturday night, McLaurin said, just to talk.

...

“He’s not a candidate” for Washington’s job, McLaurin said. “He just came here to support me and Dwayne.”

...

“It surpasses football with him and me and our relationships,” McLaurin said of Meyer. “So I tried to make it happen. It was good to see him be able to support me and Dwayne today, but to clear the record; it had nothing to do with the coaching (vacancy) or anything like that. He was here supporting his former players. I haven’t talked to him. I haven’t even looked at my phone, yet, so I’m sure I’ll call him or he’ll call me, and we’ll talk. We talked a lot last night, and he knows the way game time works, so he didn’t bother me. He appreciated me for reaching out and trying to help him get to this game.”

If we're starting coaching rumors about pretty much every game he attends, I feel slighted that we didn't get one for Saturday's Army-Navy game.

I mean, you're telling me Urban would be more interested in coaching the damn Redskins than Army? Give me a break.

Saturday's game was just short of pornography for him.

 NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. A man serves a six-month sentence for eating a cookie without permission... A woman faked a kidnapping so she could steal a car... A man is arrested after dressing up as his mother to take a driving test for her... A small Wisconsin company stored thousands of people’s CDs, then suddenly vanished... The dark world of online murder markets... A pedestrian is fatally crushed between two cars after one of them is started remotely... A science teacher takes meth and cocaine before school, passes out at Burger King, wakes up in hospital and then masturbates in the exam room.

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